I’m trialling out a new feature for this blog’s sidebar: the Feed Mix. The idea is to showcase the latest posts from the blogs of friends and family, in lieu of my ongoing attempt to get some kind of blog network together. There are a few kinks at the moment – most importantly, no Blogspot blogs! The feeds provided unfortunately get a big mangled and don’t work properly at the moment, for reasons I do not fully understand. Sorry. However, enjoy the (however unfortunately limited) mix!
Edit – oh, I’ve finally figured it out! I will now include Blogspot feeds, but you want the link to work to your blog you’re going to have to include a title with your posts I’m afraid 
Double Edit – fixed 
I went to Saoirse’s dad’s funeral yesterday. It’s not really my place to talk much about it, but it was deeply moving and I hope it did him proud. At the same time, it was good to see Emily and Sophia again and I even managed to discuss the meaning of history on the way back to the station with a friendly SWP member. (I can’t seem to avoid doing this.) So, thank you to Saoirse for wanting us there, doing the least we could do.
Yesterday was really strange overall, with Lucy arriving in the evening so that she could see a Jack Milroy exhibition this morning. I couldn’t come to that, having a prior engagement with the annual Self Christmas decoration routine (our tree is satisfyingly fat this year!), but I made up for it later by dashing back on the Tube to go out for lunch and then visit the National Gallery. There was an amusing moment where I noticed a Cezanne piece which was beautiful if remarkably familiar, before Lucy pointed out it was familiar because we have it on our wall just above the telephone in the hall. Oh yeah 
SantaCon
Back outside in Trafalgar Square we ran into the delightful surprise of SantaCon: a large rowdy collection of Santas on Nelson’s Column drinking, singing and distributing presents and\or brussel sprouts. Quite wonderful!
This put me in a good mood, and so I was doubly annoyed on the Metropolitan line on the way back home to see a National Front sticker slapped over a Metropolitan line map. Excuse me: that’s not just racism, encroaching into my city on my Tube and appropriating my national flag, but that’s also defacing the simple, smart design of the London Underground! I managed to rip most of it off, which felt good and reminded me of the friendly SWP member again, who laughed when I pointed out that – whatever your politics – you can always have a good chat with the far left, but never the far right. So that act was for you, anonymous man who led me through the dark to the train station. Peace.
I should really go to bed, since tomorrow morning I have to get up and be motivational and inspirational at QPCS (somehow!) to try and sell university life. However, I feel the need to blog since I’ve utterly failed to get through my e-mail mountain and I want to have some success tonight.
As soon as I got home I pursued the thoroughly enjoyable task of seeing old friends: walking to Camden with Joshua and ending up in the The Belgo, having hot chocolate with Saoirse, having further hot chocolate with Sanna and Joshua and also going into school to see everyone there. We also had the prizegiving ceremony at school on Thursday night, where my old History teachers gave me a present! It’s the History of London, which as Lucy points out instantly elevates it to my favourite thing ever
Over the weekend I then extended this jaunt further! I went to Birmingham over the weekend to see Lucy, see The Golden Compass Northern Lights (alright, but not breathtakingly good like the books), go out for Andy’s birthday with a whole crowd of brilliant people, and then moving on to visit Rishal at uni in Leicester. He hasn’t changed, brilliantly
Rishal with his beloved iPod Touch
Some train geekiness now: coming from Leicester, I had to get a train back to Birmingham and then to London because I had two separate return tickets. I was texting Sanna at the time, who questioned the logic of this, and my reply pretty much sums up my thoughts: “What’s that I hear? Why not have an integrated nationalised system with smartcards to pay for each journey separately like on Oyster? Wouldn’t that be good for the national economy in the long run? Why, I quite agree!”. I’m right, though. Sorry, but I am. And it should work on all buses, too, because I’m fed up of paying £1.40 in exact change to TWM. (Talking of Oyster – looks like the Young Person’s Railcard discount is coming soon for it too. Cool!)
Anyway, I was on the first train to Birmingham and as it stopped at Nuneaton I was suddenly struck with a terrific thought: I’ve been here before! On the way back from Birmingham! Hence, it must be a valid route! So I lept off – delighted at the idea I might be back home in time for the pie my dad was texting me about – and it worked! Hurrah, hurrah, thrice hurrah.
I’ll stop talking about trains now, so you can start paying attention again. To be honest I doubt if any of it was worth reading because I’m just back from having three mango beers in a night out with Joshua, Sanna and Abbi. As we were leaving we started discussing blog styles again, and I did a slightly unfair critique of Sanna’s blog (which is really only masking the jealousy I have for not being able to write like that). However! For one night only, I will now conclude this post a la Sanna:
I see you in that chair, perfect skin
Well how have you been, baby, livin’ in sin?
Hey, I gotta know, did you say Hello –
How do you do?
Well, here we are spending time in the louder part of town
and it feels like everything’s surreal.
And… actually, y’know what, I really can’t write like her much as I try. (But go ahead: I defy you to read anything meaningful into cheesy dance lyrics.) I suppose if I was following a pattern I’d start by describing a micro event in great detail, with much reference to nature, so: after prizegiving evening, I waited by bus stop with Jakov eating unsalted chips being slowly crushed in my mouth… interrogated for flavour, like searching for the soul of the restless seas within the stale city. Moving on to refer to people, places or things using only pronouns: oh, you, I hope with all my heart that you take no offence. (Resists the temptation to use an emoticon.) Miscellaneous spirituality: it hurts, sometimes, to see people marooned so far from where I’d desperately wish for them to be. But like you, I maintain the hope of change. Abrupt ending: bed beckons.
Oh, Sudan!
What kind of society places so much importance on the name of a teddy bear at a school? I mean, honestly! They clearly just need to get a grip. There are more important things in life, surely? I’m so glad to live in a more advanced society…
A 15-year-old rock music fan suspended from school for refusing to cut his long hair says he will not back down. (BBC News)
Surely silly, pointless rules undermine the serious questions of discipline and respect in schools? If you’re going to have rules, they have to be rules for a purpose which people have confidence in. So relax, guys… it’s just hair.
Oh, and I’m back home
I wasn’t go to go to the debate tonight – ‘This House Believes that the Comprehensive System is failing Britain’s Poor’ – since I was wary of my own ability to engage without being totally put off by the attitudes on display. Owen (who hasn’t been mentioned so far, but who is a lovely guy – and not even a Historian! – and a fellow comprehensive believer) encouraged me to come with him, and I did, and I’m glad I did. My understanding is that we lost the actual vote, but that’s not really the important thing.
David Chaytor, a Labour MP, put up the defence of comprehensive schools which I believe in. The opposition also contained a young, prospective Tory MP who – whilst not coming from the same perspective as me – was an eloquent and sincere speaker, and I thank him for proving that belief in comprehensive education isn’t the preserve of some Labour clique. In the bar afterwards, he said he thought I would became a Conservative in later life, on account of not being some ultra-tribal Labour person. I don’t believe he’s right, you might be glad to know, but I accept we can only wait and see. He’s right, of course, that tribal party politics is wrong: people should not vote Labour because of their ‘roots’, and should not pretend that the two-party system genuinely reflects a straight and simple division of views. My only difference with him is that I don’t believe the Tories are the only pragmatic party in British politics anymore: Labour has changed, and can change further, to better represent those of us who are not Conservatives, but do want more than pantomime politics.
Of the people speaking in favour of the motion, the two notable figures were Anthony Seldon and Peter Hitchens. Two very different men, of course. Peter Hitchens, for those of you who don’t have the misfortune to come across him, is a columnist for the Mail on Sunday with pretty strident views. He sees Britain as a country in terminal decline, and comprehensive schools as a terrible betrayal. I even talked to him in the bar afterwards, and it was pretty clear: Peter Hitchens is harking back to a past which simply did not exist, however much he would like to think it did, and he will not change. All around him he sees darkness and terror, and he only matters in the sense that he is widely read and, perhaps to a certain extent, believed. Gosh. I spoke to Peter Hitchens in a bar. It’s an experience, I suppose.
Anthony Seldon is altogether different. A likeable man, he actually prompted my first attempt at public speaking in the Union when I stood up to argue against him. Slightly nervously, I pointed out that he had argued for a broad education, not relentlessly focused on academic goals and exams, and yet in the same speech decided that ‘academic’ children should be selected away from the others at age 14. I sat down, wondering if I had simply babbled, and he turned round to say ‘good point’. Afterwards, we chatted a bit and he admitted he didn’t really believe in the proposition at all. I told him about the Brent-Eton summer school programme, and how I’d much rather bring experienced people in the best private schools – like him – into comprehensives, rather than continue this segregation. Nice guy, and I wish he could be persuaded into arguing for the opposition.
So, that was that. I just wanted to write it down before my memory grew hazy, to be honest, because it was a good night, even if we did lose. As some of you will know, I came back to learn some very sad news, which renders all of the above completely unimportant. I can’t possibly write anything meaningful about it here, but suffice to say: I’m sorry. We’re here for you.
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